Surviving in Education Today
Labels:
classroom,
education,
educators,
elementary,
frustration,
school,
students,
teaching
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I know how you feel. I’ve been there. I am there. You wake
up one morning and wonder how you got to this point. You’re thinking about how yesterday's
multiplication lesson didn’t go how you wanted and how you really need to
re-teach it. But then the punch in the gut hits you. Your required to move on tomorrow. I have to
teach the next lesson. That’s what my planner says and that’s what the
district/school pacing guide states and GOD FORBID you are teaching lesson 12.1
when you’re supposed to be teaching 12.2. It’s like you have been given the
ultimate choice. What you know as a teacher is right thing and what the
district/school SAYS is right.
We all know that
feeling. We see it on the faces in the halls as we pass our colleagues on the
way to the copier. We hear the grumblings in the teacher lounge during
lunch. Teachers are looking around and wondering where their ability to truly
TEACH has gone. I realize that everyone’s level of
frustration varies depending on your state, district, school and
principal, but in many places across the country, teachers feel less like
teachers and more like drones. I often wonder if we'll become so forced to recite out of the book that they'll just replace us with cheap labor who can read.
I could spend
paragraphs and paragraphs talking about why this has happened and bemoan
policies for trying to destroy public education, but that’s
beating a dead horse. What I want to do is help you get through your year.
Hell, sometimes it’s simply about getting through your day or even your
afternoon. There’s a danger that teaching
will turn into a 180 day countdown to summer and while I too appreciate my 9
week hiatus, I can’t live a normal life counting down to June in early
September. So how can we fix it?
The very first thing
is to accept that certain things in our profession are what they are right now
and there is NO WAY to change them in the short term. If
you walk into your classroom with fingers crossed, praying that any day it will
all change, you’re in for a long and miserable journey. New curriculum, standards, schedules,
testing, reviews, evaluations and principals are all things we can’t control.
So don’t even try. Just remember one very important thing. The most important
thing in fact. Restate it over and over each morning as you fret over the days upcoming lessons. Restate it
when things seem most frustrating.
“All that matters are my students and the impact
I make on their lives”
When we close our doors and block out the external crap, we can focus on why we're here. For the kids. To make them better people. To see them grow.
I hope that my unfiltered opinions and ideas can help you. If even just a little as you enter the steel-cage-death-match we call a classroom.
JC
When we close our doors and block out the external crap, we can focus on why we're here. For the kids. To make them better people. To see them grow.
I hope that my unfiltered opinions and ideas can help you. If even just a little as you enter the steel-cage-death-match we call a classroom.
JC
I welcome all comments and discussion on this blog. The more we can talk, the more productive we can be to elicit change.
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